Products > Test Equipment
Multimeters with (Color) Graphic Display - Summary & Comparison
2N3055:
--- Quote from: luma on January 26, 2022, 09:25:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: Fungus on January 23, 2022, 04:14:44 pm ---It's not just the battery, it's the screens, too: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/replacing-oled-screen-on-an-agilent-u1253a-multimeter/
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That's actually kind of where I'm going with this. Thanks to cell phones, high resolution displays with MTBF in the 10s of thousands of hours are available for a dollar or two. Early experiments with things like mono OLED from 10 years ago didn't go well, but.... 10 years have passed and the economics of mobile devices has pushed display technology a LONG way in that time. Open a supplier catalog for evidence.
Others here are pointing out problems with touchscreens, and I get that and agree for a lot of use cases but... "high-res color screen" doesn't necessarily mean it also has to be a touchscreen. No reason not to use existing control surfaces (big dial wheel primarily) with a nicer display.
7 segment displays are low power but that's about the end of the advantages they offer. Visibility on a reflective LCD 7 seg display is hot garbage compared to even crappy modern LCDs. With a backlight they can be a little more readable, but then you stop being low power and might as well have used a color LCD.
Just because we are all holding multimeters that were created with technology from a few decades ago doesn't mean that it always has to be this way, and that no improvements could possibly be made. Uni-T seems content to wait around for Fluke et al to make a thing and to then make a clone of that thing. Fluke's product cycle is glacial for their own (good) reasons, but not everyone out there needs the value that Fluke brings to the table (which are often unrelated to the actual performance of the device). One can hope that product managers from other companies can identify the pretty huge gap here and maybe develop something to fill it.
Until then, the UT181a suggestion seems to be a reasonable tradeoff of visibility, performance, and price for me. Teardowns of that unit show a date of 2013 on the PCB, and devices seem to have hit the market in 2015. It seems like the DMM market just stone stopped trying new ideas in the 7 years since...
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High res screens are power hungry. They are cesspool of EMI interference. They need powerful CPU to drive them.
They need lot of current. Last thing people that use meters for work want is to charge it like a cell phone. With crappy little USB-C connector. In a desert, forest, on a ship, platform, factory, mill, refinery... They need batteries to last for some time, and to be field replaceable, so they can carry spares...
Classic reflective LCD have BEST visibility and contrast. In a daylight. They have backlight for dark places.
Bottom line is, nothing you mentioned have any function. It's all form over function. It is a bane of this modern time where everything has to be in HD even if there is only YES or NO on a screen.
There are many other things that would be useful on a meter. To add arbitrary math, so you have a combination of graphing calculator and meter.. But then there are thousands of Fluke 87V users that would jump at that kind of meter because it is "not ergonomic because it is too complicated to use...". Many are utterly confused with dual screen on meters... Many find Fluke 289 and Brymen 869 too complicated to use... They demand less features, not more.
Bottom line, these things you're mentioning is not progress. It is you expecting meters to be compliant with current graphic overloaded mainstream culture that values form over function.
At the same time, people that are actually using meters for work couldn't care less for that.
And meters stay the way they are. They are doing their job.
Like forks and spoons, they don't change because there is no need for it. They work perfectly as they are.
luma:
EMI must be a solved problem because I see color LCDs parked on the front of every other category of test measurement equipment sold in the past decade or so. Every other measurement tool on my bench is using one, meaning scopes, spectrum analyzers, VNAs, power supplies, bench DMMs, etc etc etc.
For daylight use, my cell phone is perfectly readable in full daylight, and yours probably is too. That industry has driven display technology to this point and we’re all the beneficiaries of the panels they’ve developed.
In terms of UI, color brings an extra dimension to your eyesight and, used effectively, can convey a world a meaning that you won't get from a 7 digit display. Again, every other instrument I have on my bench (and most handheld ones) makes use of color to indicate all manner of situations. Wouldn't it be great if I could set a pass/fail boundary on my DMM, hook it into the DUT, and get a clear green/red indication if the reading is in range?
I know existing meters can last years on a single cell if used sparingly, but my workflow already includes the notion of a charger, my bench and my drawers have all the DC I need, and I already expect to have to occasionally recharge a device. If the device can make it through a work day for me, then that's enough battery. The same applies to my wall of cordless tools. I need an angle grinder to last me as long as my job takes, then I have no problem dropping the battery back onto the charger. This is an extremely common workflow in industry today and it won't be unfamiliar to most.
I appreciate that you have been using a certain instrument a certain way for many decades, but I don't think it necessarily follows that it simply MUST be that way forever. Fluke seems to think it's a desirable feature, but only on their highest end models. UI/UX engineers are a thing, and they haven't been sitting still. Some of us are more ready to embrace new technologies than others, and that's fine, as I suspect you'll have several decades yet of 7 digit displays available in the future. Me, I'm looking for something a little more thoughtfully designed and which makes effective use of modern technology. Better still if it was inexpensive and also performed well but... that might be a while coming yet.
skander36:
@Luma - If you are not happy with the boot time , you will be disapointed , because all graphical display multimeters need a boot time, something comparable with Fluke 289.
UNI-T will be a good choice, but only if you are not looking for logging and analyze data on-site, because his software cannot center graph when you zoom (like Fluke 289). simply when you zoom the graph go out of screen :)
Also calibrating can be a problem, unless someone know the code ...
CEM's DT-9987 is just a poor clone of Fluke 289 with even worse graph function (no zoom at all) than UNI-T 181A, but it can be easily calibrated and it has bluetooth. Maybe DT-9989 will have more luck.
I didn'tried Metrix and Chauvin.
Also Gossen 273 & 274 at an enormous price - over 2500 E.
There is a clear trend that every maker to have a few models with color LCD display, but that come's with a price, not only money, but power hungry.
But hey I've tried toys like Owon HDS 27X and it boot fast, but it is not a serious multimeter (it's an portable oscilocope) and LCR's meters like UNI-T 622 which also boot fast. For sure there is a way to make fast and acurate multimeters with color LCD display.
Fungus:
--- Quote from: luma on January 26, 2022, 11:50:28 pm ---EMI must be a solved problem because I see color LCDs parked on the front of every other category of test measurement equipment sold in the past decade or so. Every other measurement tool on my bench is using one, meaning scopes, spectrum analyzers, VNAs, power supplies, bench DMMs, etc etc etc.
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Yeah? Move your 'scope probe closer to the screen, see what happens....
Fungus:
--- Quote from: skander36 on January 27, 2022, 12:28:16 am ---UNI-T will be a good choice, but only if you are not looking for logging and analyze data on-site, because his software cannot center graph when you zoom (like Fluke 289). simply when you zoom the graph go out of screen :)
Also calibrating can be a problem, unless someone know the code ...
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Doesn't matter. He's not looking for function, he only wants form.
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